While the number of billionaires grows each day...Used to be that a millionaire was the big thing...Now days, a million dollars is nothing...And with that in mind, what in the world is 30,000 a year for wages???
Around here (near-Cleveland) it's enough to live on, but without anything for extras.
Not much different than in recent decades. There is a slow ratcheting downward of the median to the average.
http://www.ssa.gov/oact/cola/central.html
A million dollars, in terms of security without work or retirement is just about nothing these days. It won’t buy you a decent living. You might withdraw 3% of it a year and maybe and I do mean maybe survive to die but you won’t be doing much living in the mean time.
That is how much a million dollars is.
I never got a job from a poor person but I sure have paid a lot of money out to support them. I’d much rather have them earning decent money instead of having my money laundered by a bunch of slug bureaucrats and politicians than having what is left given to the poor. At least 1/3 and as much of my lifetime earnings have been taken by the government. Maybe 15 to 20% of that is money I got benefit from and helped to prosper the nation. The rest went for making more poor people more poor and dependent and more demanding of my money from politicians.